


marred and littered with a million moving feet

by plinys



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Gen, Personified Cities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-13
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-05-01 11:39:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5204456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>New York City is filled with idealists, but New York could never be one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	marred and littered with a million moving feet

**Author's Note:**

> Originally I wrote this as a treat for Yuletide, but I didn't end up hitting the 1k minimum before I reached the end of the fic, so I figured rather than adding some extra fluff bits I'd just post this early as a gift for everyone in the fandom. Basically the prompt in question had reminded me of this Les Mis fic I remembered reading ages ago in which R was a anthropomorphic representation of Paris. (Though I can't remember the name of it). And I sort of ran with the idea. Hope somebody enjoys this?

_(“Pardon me.”)_

It is those two simple words that will change history forever.

Though neither the man speaking them, nor the city hearing them, could have realized it at the time.

 

_(“Pardon me.”)_

For a second, New York worries that he has been discovered. That his attempts to blend in with the people around him has failed, and there he stand singled out against the landscape of his city. A landscape that is echoed on his features, each time he looks into the mirror.

This wouldn’t be the first time that it had happened, a city picked out from the groups of men surrounding them, recognized as though by some divine power in the eyes of those who beheld him.

It was always the chosen few that could identify their city.

The people who belonged within these boarders, whose fate was inexplicitly tied with the city that they would one day call their home.

New York liked to believe that he could recognize those people on his own, that he could look into their eyes, and know in an instant that they souls were kindred to the soul of their city.

He could still remember the first few that had found him, when New York was still young and new in this world. Full of his own hopes and dreams, but those few had fallen from memory, and the men who had brought New York into being were lost to the passing of time.

While New York stood on, barely more than a boy, with everyone he knew and believed in dead.

Their faces will haunt him until the end of time.

Cities lived on for an eternity, after all.

While they could look like people to those who might pass them on the streets, they would never be mortal men. His one gift and his one weakness, would always be to outlive those who loved him.

 

_(“Pardon me.”)_

There will people sometimes, men who will stand on his shores, eyes lit up with hopes and aspirations as they take in the slowly rising buildings of the city. Crafting dreams and images in their heads of a city that will shape them into something new, something respectable that may live on in the memories of those who will follow their footsteps.

New York had always been the gateway to a new world, and for those men he was their opportunity, their gateway to the place that was finally made for them.

Warning them to get ready to be let down, only seems fair, though with each pleasant warning he offers he’s brushed off once more. Reality ignored time and time again.

So New York stops saying anything. He bites his tongue so hard that his own opinions are buried where even he can’t find them. Deep in the recesses of the city, in the dark and damp places that reek of death, where ones hopes and dreams will go to die.

He blends in with the shadows, become a man no different from the others.

When people wonder where the boy they used to call New York City has gone, he doesn’t answer them back. Instead he hides in a new identity.

Though he knows too much and says too little, there are always eyes that glance suspiciously at him, before looking away wondering what could possibly have given them pause.

New York isn’t forgotten, he never will be, but it’s not _his_ face that they imagine anymore.

Instead it’s an idealized picture, so different from what he sees in his own reflection.

New York City is filled with idealists, but New York could never be one.

For every man that recognized the city for what he was, there were thousands of others who looked past him, their visions clouded with idealism.

 

_(“Pardon me.”)_

The man standing before him is harder to discern than most who have come before him.

An idealist, surely, that much New York cannot deny, but there is something else there.

A searching and hungry look about him that sends a chill through New York. Wind picking up restlessly through the streets, as he imagines this man can see into the very soul of the city, silently judging it with those deep brown eyes.

Fingers which had latched onto New York’s wrist to get his attention, recede back to their owner’s sides. Twitching restlessly as he fails to calm himself. There is excitement lining his features, a small hint of a smile there that New York wants to coach to its full potential.  His clothes rumpled and scented vaguely of the sea, but above all else there is hope manifested in the man before him.

A hope that stirs something within New York, drawing him nearer and nearer, even though he knows he ought to turn away, before the reality of this city – of these colonies– steals the light from those very eyes.

New York knows with certainty that he will kill this man before their story is done.

 

_(“Pardon me.”)_

“But are you Aaron Burr, sir?”

“That depends. Who’s asking?”

 


End file.
